Namfrel expresses voters' disenfranchisement over election glitches

May 10, 2016 5:14 am

By Filane Mikee Cervantes

MANILA, May 9 (PNA) — The National Citizens' Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) on Monday expressed its concern over cases of disenfranchisement resulting from the vote counting machine (VCM) malfunctions that happened.

In a statement, Namfrel said the nature of malfunctions that the VCMs manifested include sudden shutting down for no particular reason, paper jams which resulted in long queues for the inserting of ballots, failure to issue voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT), and overheating.

Namfrel also expressed its disappointment with the rampant vote-buying happening in the provinces.

According to reports gathered by Namfrel, there were allegedly bribes amounting to more than Php4,000 per voter.

The poll watchdog also received complaints of alleged coercion and intimidation happening within the polling centers.

"Candidates and political party agents have been reported in areas in ARMM (Autonomous Region in Mslim Mindanao) coercing voters while voting," said Namfrel.

Namfrel is also expecting the Random Manual Auditing (RMA) teams to start once the polling precincts that will be covered are announced.

"With 238 polling precincts covered, we expect that it will give a sense of the accuracy of the voting machines since we have received numerous reports of VVPAT information not matching the votes in the ballot," said Namfrel.

It assured they will monitor the transmission of election results from all over the country to be relayed to the Comelec servers and the Transparency server.

"We hope that failures in transmission will be lessened through the use of different transmission devices which the Comelec purchases," it said.

Namfrel is the organization accredited by the Comelec to assist in election-related matters, such as monitoring and reporting possible irregularities and anomalies during election period. (PNA)